Ever In Your Favor
by LunaStorm
Summary: I thought nothing could be worse than waiting to be reaped. Then I was chosen as Tribute and found out I was wrong. I thought nothing could be worse than the Arena. Then I became a Mentor and realized I was wrong. I thought nothing could be worse than leading children to their deaths year after year...I'm about to discover that I am, once again, wrong.


_Disclaimer:__ Anything you recognize – be it character, location, idea or line – belongs to others; I may be playing with them but I make no profit from this._

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**Ever In Your Favor**

The reaping, again. A yearly torture. How long since it started?

32 years, of course – officially. These are the 32nd Annual Hunger Games. The 32nd time my District is forced to watch its sons and daughters sent to slaughter for the entertainment of the Capitol.

32 years... officially.

But for me, in particular?

A lot less, I'm only 28 after all, and yet, it seems so long. So. Long.

The Games have been a feature of my world my whole life, but the first time I'd really, well, _understood_, I was in the pen with all the other 12 years old, trembling and frightened. Until then, it hadn't seemed quite real. No-one close to me had been at risk: I was the eldest in my family. Suddenly, it was all concrete and close and terrifying.

I'd stood there and felt the fear choking me, the thoughts churning in my young head – how many names, how many possibilities, was I more at risk then the others, was I going to be picked?

It had been the first year tesserae had been introduced: a way to bring home a little more food, a little more fuel... A little more life, in exchange for a greater chance at death.

I'd taken them, of course I had. I was the eldest. There was never any other option. I'd taken four, one for each of my younger siblings and one for my mother. So my name had been in that urn five times.

Five chances at a death sentence... was it a lot, was it not? Was it even possible to quantify such a thing?

Was it as wrong as I feared to feel so happy when someone else was called?

Wouldn't they have felt the same, had our fates been reversed?

...The reaping always poses questions with no possible answers.

The year after that I had watched my best friend, Branch, be reaped along with an 18-year-old girl with hard eyes. I don't remember her name. She'd made it to the last four before being gutted savagely by the giant brute who'd gone on to win. Branch... hadn't made it past the initial Bloodbath. They hadn't let him run and I'd watched my best friend – looking so small and terrified and helpless – be cut in half by a sword-wielding monster-girl from District 2. I'd watched his necklace – the one we all had added a small pendant to, his parents and siblings and friends and me, as token – fall to the ground in a pool of his red, red blood.

The image still haunts me after all these years.

...The reaping always brings up memories you wish you didn't have.

I'd been sixteen when my name had been called. The 24th Annual Hunger Games...

At least it hadn't been the year after that. The Quarter Quell had been a nightmare beyond words. I'd been so horrified when it had been announced – _the Districts will choose their own tributes..._ I'd known I couldn't possibly – not after what I'd – no. I wouldn't, couldn't, send someone else, deliberately, to that fate. _No._

I'd actually taken a good dose of poison to avoid it – all of it: the campaign, the desperate look for volunteers, the elections, the horror and grief and fear and ugly betrayals. You are justified, if the Peacekeepers actually confirm that you're too ill to take part, it's the only possibility. I hadn't hesitated before ingesting the leaves that would put me out of commission.

My absence had been remarked upon, of course it had – the Victor of the previous year! Such a disappointment! And a mysterious illness! Shocking! They'd gone so far as to send doctors from the Capitol, no less, an unheard-of instance in the Districts: I was _that_ famous. And not only for my winning the Games.

It was good that they were highly trained, sophisticated doctors though. One of our modest healers would have recognized the effects of poinsettia at a glance. _They_ were completely baffled and by the time they decided to go with the uncouth solution of stuffing activated charcoal down my system, I'd escaped the worst of it.

At least the horrific excitement of the Quarter Quell had soon been enough to divert the Capitol's attention from me, anyway. Especially when Districts 1 and 2 had started making a lot of noise about _wanting_ to go. That was the origin of what we've quickly come to call the Careers.

I have only vague memories of those Games, my first as Mentor. Images mostly: of sad, dead gazes in the eyes of the Tributes who'd been thrown there because no-one cared about them enough to protect them; of the crazy glint in the eyes of those who'd struggled to be voted there, eager to die.

My District had sent a young orphan girl, barely fourteen, who'd been living on her own for two years by then and had almost no friends, and a fifteen year old boy whose single mother had not been as convincing as those who'd gone around with makeshift bats, threatening who might vote for their children and siblings with beatings and worse, or those who'd taken the food from their family's mouths to bribe the voters.

I'd reappeared just in time to watch the Tribute Parades and everybody was more or less satisfied, thankfully. I don't think I could have lived with myself if I'd taken part in that election. Especially after seeing what the Gamesmakers had come up with for the Quarter Quell Arena... I think even some people from the Capitol might have had nightmares about it. I hope so, for their own souls' health.

Not that my own time in that thrice-forsaken place had been a walk in the park, of course. But I'd survived.

I'd survived.

And after that?

Year after year of watching children being reaped, this time from the high standpoint of the dais.

Year after year of watching children being murdered, despite my best efforts.

Twelve young Tributes I've mentored so far, and no-one has survived. Not one.

My own Mentor helped out, of course; she has shared the burden by taking care of one Tribute until two years ago, when alcohol has finally killed her. She, too, had not seen another survivor after me. It wasn't all that surprising that she'd given up at long last and cut her wrists with the shards of her last whiskey bottle. She was old anyway, in spirit if not in years: she'd won the 5th edition of the Games and she'd been 18 already at the time – almost safe; except that no-one was safe. Even Victors were never safe from the Games – nay, _especially_ Victors, for we are expected to participate every damn year. Two decades of that had slowly destroyed my mentor, just like they were destroying me, now that I was facing these senseless deaths on my own.

My gaze roams over the youths gathered under me like cattle for slaughter. Who will I lead to their death this year?

I watch the girls, dressed in their best clothes as if that could somehow help stave off the horror, many of them on the verge of tears. I watch the tall 18-years-old males, clinging to the hope that it won't be them and then it will finally, finally be over for them. I watch the younger teens, pale and clammy and attempting to show bravado.

But my roaming gaze stays stubbornly, fearfully away from the 12-year-old boys. I do not dare look that way.

Because if I was brave enough to look at the sweet, small faces of those children, I would see a well-known one... a beloved one... with eyes as dark as the molten chocolate that I tasted for the first time on my train ride to the Capitol and that remains the one good thing in that detestable world... with the soft, dark skin and the fine features of my slim, beautiful wife...

If I was brave enough... I would see my son there.

My son...

It had been a stupid, stupid thing to do.

The kind of thing idiotic 16-year-old will do to convince themselves they're cool, to impress themselves and their equally idiotic friends, to feel daring and rebellious. An act of bravado.

The night before the reaping is always hard, the fear mounts inside you like an unstoppable horde of grape flea beetles; some react hiding away, burying themselves in their small homes under torn blankets or in the oblivion of drugs and alcohol; some react clutching their loved ones close in the pretense they might shield each other, somehow.

And some loose all sense of self-preservation and launch into the craziest, most stupidly daring endeavors they can come up with, with the kind of desperate carelessness only those who are about to die and know it think they're entitled to have.

That was why a dozen of us decided to sneak into one of the orchards at night and steal oranges directly from the trees. A capital offense - even getting caught outside during the night would cost us a whipping, and that if we were allowed to get off lightly, but stealing produce? Had we been caught, we'd have died a very painful, very _exemplary_ death.

But we were young and stupid and terrified and defiant and egging each other on the whole time and altogether we did our best to forget the reaping entirely, that night, and along with it, everything that it represented, everything the Districts had lost and would not recover, everything that was wrong with our sad world, with our downtrodden lives.

It's the kind of idiocy youngsters will do because they feel invincible, even when they were born beaten, because they feel invulnerable, even when they suffer their whole lives, because they feel immortal. Even with the reaping looming over them.

A stupid, stupid thing.

And then one thing had led to another and I'd ended up doing something even more stupid, right there on the humid ground, with the delicate perfume of the orange trees enveloping us.

Oh, I'd loved Blossom. Sort of. And she'd loved me. We'd known each other all our lives and we'd liked spending what little free time we had together; we'd even had a vague idea about marrying, after... _after._ After we were both 19 and out of reaping age, at the very least.

But that night...

That night, adrenaline was driving me to unwise heights and we were all so giddy with our own daring, noisily hushing each other as we ran and tumbled among the trees that were suddenly strange and enchantingly unfamiliar in the darkness. That night we had thoughtlessly forgotten all our cares; a bunch of silly teenagers that felt oh-so-brave, so _rebellious,_ and excited, fear and defiance coursing in our veins, _so_ very excited, and it felt wonderful, and the air was so sweet, the moonrays so magic, and Blossom was so beautiful.

So beautiful.

Her dark skin was soft and fragrant, her hair, for once, loose and luscious upon her shoulders and her lips... her lips were so sweet... sweeter than the honeyblossoms she was named after...

The night had enveloped us all, deceptively protective, and then she'd smiled at me, and I'd stopped thinking altogether, lost in the wonder of discovering her and being discovered in turn.

Later, on the train that was taking me to my death sentence, I'd been glad. Selfishly, defiantly glad that I'd snatched that marvelous, perfect night in the forbidden orchard.

And then I'd put it from my mind, because there was no point, because nothing would come from it, because I wasn't going to see her again.

But I had seen her again.

I'd survived, and I'd won, and I'd come back – and she'd been expecting my baby. She was even more beautiful than before I left, truly radiant, so deliriously happy. And very, very pregnant.

Cold had seeped into my heart then, a choking, cloying fear, pouring into my life in a terrible wave. A child... a child who would grow up in a world that had thrown his father and too many others into the Arena, year after year, to murder or get murdered, or both. A child that would run the risk of being reaped too, year after year, of being doomed to my same fate. To murder or get murdered, or both. And all for the twisted, cruel amusement of our sick masters.

If I'd had any choice, I would never, never have even contemplated children. Not in this twisted world of ours.

But I hadn't had a choice.

The Capitol had gone crazy about it. They always loved a good show and this? This was great. I was suddenly the tragic hero, torn from the love of my life by cruel chance, who through unbearable hardships had made it back to her and to a sickeningly happy ending. The perfect fairytale, and my stylist had made damn sure the both of us looked the part, the dashing Victor and his pure-hearted Princess.

I'd hated it, every minute of it, every make-up session making us look a little less like ourselves, every falsity-dripping article run on our romance, every camera we'd been demanded to smile for.

But what could I do?

We got married in front of hundreds of spectators, our carefully arranged and scripted ceremony blown onto the same huge screens that had shown my slow and bloody path during the Games. Our child was born during the Victory Tour – irony of ironies – and the beautiful baby boy had instantly become the darling of Panem.

We hadn't even been allowed to name him: oh no, it was too good an opportunity to pass, after all, the people of the Capitol had been all aflutter about the chance of voting their favored name in the contest that had been promptly arranged for the goal. Naturally, neither Blossom nor I had had any voice in the matter; and now my son was the only boy in the District to bear an irritating, Capitol-chosen name – Erwin.

None of that mattered, however, because from the moment he had first locked eyes with me as a newborn, Erwin had held my heart firmly in his little palms. The fear and the nightmares had only increased over time, but I would do anything for him. Anything.

And now my little boy was waiting to... waiting to...

The familiar, cold grip of fear twisted my insides just a little tighter.

Seventeen years, I determine. Seventeen years since this yearly torture truly started for me. I have suffered through the horror of the reaping sixteen times already. And yet, this year everything's worse.

This year, my son is among them.

I barely hear the name of the girl I will soon watch die. All my attention seems to be riveted on the males' urn as the Escort for my District nears it.

_Notmysonnotmysonpleaseplease pleaseanyonebutmysonpleasepl easenotmysonnonono..._

My mantra has no effect.

"Erwin Thistlethorn!"

The name rings out all too clearly in the stony silence that always accompanies the reaping and as the Escort gasp in badly concealed delight, my world crashes into a million sharp shards.

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_A/N:__ ...Had to get this out of my system. I doubt I will continue it: I have a good idea for the Arena, but... well... Chariot Costumes? NOT my cup of tea. Not to mention the interviews... Luna_


End file.
